Traditional surgeries are often open procedures, which require long incisions through which the surgeon operates. Increasingly, minimally invasive procedures are being used in place of traditional surgeries for a range of operations, including General Surgery, Gynecologic Surgery, Head and Neck Surgery, Urologic Surgery, Colorectal Surgery, Bariatric Surgery, Cardiac Surgery, Thoracic Surgery and others. Advantages of minimally invasive procedures as compared to traditional surgeries include, but are not limited to, smaller incisions, reduced blood loss, improved wound healing, and shorter hospital stays.
Minimally invasive surgeries can be performed using robotic surgical systems (e.g., the da Vinci® surgical system from Intuitive Surgical, Inc. and others by Medtronic, Ethicon, etc.), in which specialized robotic surgical instruments are operated by the surgeon from a computer console. Such systems typically comprise a patient cart (FIG. 1B), which is positioned adjacent to the patient and contains the arms of the robot with surgical instruments attached thereto (these instruments are placed into the patient's body through trocars that are clamped to the robot arms), and a surgeon console (FIGS. 1A and 1C), which is located away from the patient, from which the surgical instruments on the patient cart are controlled by the surgeon under 3D high definition vision.